2014 Game Of The Year

I believe it is important to differentiate between “favorite,” and “best.” For example, my favorite movie is, “A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints, ” but I don't think it has even an iota of both the immense cultural and artistic influence that “Citizen Kane, ” had over the film industry. With that being said, my personal favorite game this year was Far Cry 4. But even though the game was an immense amount of fun, it didn't do anything new. Rather it just expanded upon what made Far Cry 3 great. So, with that out of the way I sat down to think of what game broke the conventional gaming mold, what game set itself apart from the rest, and what game had me obsessing over it long after the console had been turned off. After much thought, my choice for the game of the year is Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Torro's “playable teaser” for there new joint venture Silent Hills, P.T.

I understand that many will disagree with this choice simply based off the fact that its name is P.T., or “playable teaser,” and it is a demo, rather than a full-fledged game. But, Kojima has already said that P.T. will have nothing to do with the story of Silent Hills. So to me this game should be viewed as its own IP with its own story and mechanics. If you do disagree, feel free to express your opinions in the comments, but I think there is a strong case at viewing this game as the best to come out this year.

P.T. was a game that took risks this year. In an age where games hold player's hands through hours of tutorials and quick time events, P.T. gave you a map of the controls and that's it. You were let loose into a paradox of repeating rooms with no insight as to why you were there or what was going on. The game trusted players to be able to figure things out for themselves and that feeling was a breath of fresh air after playing countless games that spend hours stopping the flow of action for yet another tutorial. P.T. never stopped and it never gave you room to breath. Once you were in it, you had no choice but to continuously walk down that hall as things became more bizarre and more terrifying. I loved the feeling of helplessness and panic I experienced as I knew something was coming and I was on the edge of my seat almost every moment I played, feeling I had solved a puzzle with no seconds to spare. P.T. was sheer terror and I felt I was on my own in that hall. I didn't feel there was an omnipotent being waiting to give me upgrades at every turn or prizes for completing an objective. In that hall I had myself and my sheer curiosity, which ran wild at what was going on around me and what may be going on behind me. That's the beauty of P.T.: There are no audio logs to find to give you insight on the story, there are no cutscenes that deliver some long awaited twist, there is nothing within that game that is going to aid you. P.T. lets the player just play the game and figure things out for themselves.

P.T. relied on word of mouth. Released with little information about the game, other than its very existence, P.T. created a water cooler world around it, where people shared their stories from the night before and helped each other with the puzzles that got increasingly difficult as the game went on. With nothing in-game to help you, P.T. embraced that people were going to look up playthroughs or ask their friends for the solutions to puzzles. The game was made to be talked about and speculated upon. I spent hours reading articles and theories on the story and the game. For several weeks the only game I had on my mind was P.T. I told my friends about it and created enough intrigue in them that they wanted to play it and they were telling others about it. P.T. was mysterious enough that people couldn't help but obsess over it and who knows if all its mysteries are solved. Sure, it's been solved that it is the prelude of a new Silent Hill game, but is that everything the game has hidden?

P.T. reminds me a lot of Journey. It's a game that does nothing else but let you play. It doesn't bog you down with lore from previous games, it doesn't tell you how to do anything, it just lets you go. The story is strong enough in just a few hours that you don't need to search for missing notes or audio logs. P.T. is its own entity and does everything a game should do better than any game that came out this year. It thrives off player's curiosity and is at its best when the console is off and you're still wandering those halls in your mind speculating on what could be there and what you could have missed. P.T. has already put massive pressure on Silent Hills to live up to and time will tell if it does, but for now P.T. is a stand alone game that in my mind ranks better than every AAA game that came out this year. 

                                Source: Silent Hill Wiki